It’s official. We’re in a recession. Like we didn’t know that already. A recession is two consecutive quarters of contraction in the gross domestic product, the total production effort of the country. The GDP contracted by 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter, a bit less than the 5.4 percent experts had predicted, if that’s any consolation. Yes, it’s a rough time for not only our economy but the world’s.
However, despite what President Obama keeps telling you, these are not the worst economic times since the Great Depression. This is the worst recession since 1982 when the GDP shrank by 6.4. Although the doom-and-gloomers love to bring panic, they can’t seem to get past that mountain of economic malaise known as the Carter Years. They can’t even get past that little berm early in the Reagan Administration.
An AP report on the recent numbers noted that the housing, credit and financial crises are the worst since the 1930s; but are they really? You probably didn’t know that in December previously owned home sales were up 6.5 percent. That’s a little nugget these people don’t want you to know.
These people are those who see this recent economic downturn as an opportunity to usher in unbridled socialism. I count George W. Bush in that number. He opened up the door to unprecedented government control with his ill-advised bank bailout. Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who pushed for the bailout, is a fringe lunatic global warmist. This guy is for all sorts of government spending to fight global warming, which has now been debunked as junk science. Why would such people ignore the science and keep pressing forward with this failed theory? Because, like the banking crisis, it strikes terror in the hearts of Americans who look to the government to solve the problem. People like Paulson and Barney Frank and Obama are glad to gin up the panic because it will mean more government control, which leads to the current so-called stimulus package being offered up by the Democrats in Congress. It was no coincidence that Al Gore testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at exactly the same time the Senate was considering the trillion-dollar bill. You see, $537 billion of that money will go toward global warming schemes, things like CO2 sequestration, which is this harebrained idea of sucking CO2 from the air and then pumping it into the ground.
The stimulus package, which is more like a depression package, gives the federal government new authority to build elementary schools, something that has always been under the control of state and local governments. Make-work programs like building roads just to put people back to work will be temporary, at best, and will cost taxpayers billions of dollars. There are currently just over 11 million people out of work. There are between 12 and 20 million illegal aliens in this country stealing people’s jobs. It would make sense to ramp up our efforts to run these people out of the country. Don’t count on it. In fact, look for amnesty to be the next big issue this congress undertakes.
The fix is in, unless you stop it.
